Ghana legend Abedi Pele has tipped an African team to succeed in next summer's World Cup finals in South Africa.

Africa will have six representatives at the finals 2010 which includes the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria and hosts South Africa.

With football's showpiece event set to take place for the first ever time in Africa, many see the competition as the best-ever opportunity for a team from the continent to make history and lift the Jules Rimet trophy for the first time.

Pele has backed up that belief by insisting that come the summer an African nation may well be hoisting aloft football's most prestigious prize.

"We definitely will have one African team that goes far and when I say goes far I mean as far as raising the trophy," the 45 year-old told French news agency AFP.

"When I make this prediction people laugh, but I believe it.

"This is our best chance of lifting the trophy because if you study the history of the World Cup Brazil are the only team to win it outside their continent.

"When I told football officials that African champions Egypt would defeat world champions Italy during the FIFA Confederations Cup this year they all laughed.

"It happened and they had to admit I was right," he added.

As of now the best an African team has achieved at the World Cup are two quarter-final appearances by Cameroon and Senegal in Italia 1990 and Korea/Japan 2002 respectively, although Nigeria (USA, 1994) and Ghana (Germany, 2006) have both reached the last 16 in recent times.

The draw for the Group stages is set to take place on Friday in Cape Town.